Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers — and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here’s how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.
If your child cannot read their textbooks, they need digital copies of their books. Schools now can use National Instructional Material Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) to get e-text. Learn the details that will help you advocate for your child so they can use NIMAS. And learn where to find the publishers and producers that provide e-text.
Leaders at the Arlington County (Virginia) NAACP call on the Superintendent of APS Public Schools to adopt evidence-based reading instruction in every district K-3 classroom. Our children’s literacy is a critical civil rights and equity issue. Every child has the right to consistent, high-quality instruction.
Reading fluency is a child’s ability to read a book or other text accurately, with reasonable speed, and with appropriate expression. A fluent reader doesn’t have to stop and “decode” each word and can focus attention on what the story or text means. Fluency is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read!
Parents can support their child’s vocabulary skills through read alouds at home. Find out about Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 vocabulary words and terchniques for informal teaching while you read aloud.
While parents understand the importance of reading to children, it is often a struggle to read to two. How can parents negotiate the “book wars,” when one child only wants to read chapter books and the other insists on reading picture books? What can parents do when one child wants to read about dinosaurs and the other wants to read about ballerinas?
With the Common Core, literacy is intentionally taught within content areas. See what a CCSS mini-thematic unit in science might look like for children in the primary grades.
Understanding text structure is key to reading comprehension and also helps strengthen writing skills. In this section you’ll learn about the 5 most common text structures and how to help students learn to identify and use text structures in their reading and writing.
In addition to the unique gifts and interests that autistic students bring to the classroom as people, their responses can serve as an early warning system for pedagogical problems that are happening in the classroom as a whole.
ELL expert Susan Lafond provides an overview of the ways in which Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy differ from the standards that states currently use. She also discusses the ways in which these shifts will impact ELL instruction.
The framework provided in this article for viewing students’ science writing offers teachers the opportunity to assess and support scientific language acquisition.
Applaud your budding story writer. Hosted by Vivica A. Fox, this episode examines the connection between reading and writing and between spelling and composition. The program features successful methods for encouraging children to write and build their vocabularies.